By Sharla Sikes

Ah, its name lends itself so well to bad puns.

Ribbit, a California-based startup, plans to begin offering Web-based customizable phone services.

Called a “software-as-a-service” model, the new company’s services should be available to consumers early in 2008. Some 600 outside developers are working with Ribbit to create Web voice applications for both consumer and business use.

“The world doesn’t need another phone company,” said Ted Griggs, co-founder and CEO at Ribbit. “What it needs is new kind of phone company, one that liberates voice from its current confines—devices, plans and business models—and more readily integrates into the workflow of our professional and personal lives.”

Built on an open platform, carrier-grade switch and open application programming interface, Ribbit will allow developers to build voice communication applications and speech-to-text functions for integration into Web sites, communities and applications. Ribbit’s switches allow it to transfer calls not just between phones but also among desktop widgets, social networking applications, Flash-based phones, web browsers and phones of all types, including landlines, mobile phones and internet telephony software running on PCs.

“We want developers to be able to use telephony to make money,” says Ted Griggs, the CEO of Ribbit. “There’s no door closed on this API for them. They have access to the guts of everything.”

Salesforce.com teamed up with Ribbit to create a voicemail application to integrate with its customer resource management platform. Salesforce touts the integration of voice communications with Web applications.

“More and more business services are becoming involved in the Internet,” said Adam Gross, Salesforce’s vice president for developer markets. “Ribbit is bringing more business class services on the Internet, more than just phone services, but as voice, email, and searchable voice mail, along with the ability to have it all as flexible as other business services. We think that developers should be able to decide how they would like to take advantage of telephony and create applications to use in new contexts.”

Ribbit’s new approach aims to attract users through simplicity—no new hardware, no downloads—and also through its flexibility.

Related Content

Subscribe to the post comments feeds or Leave a trackback